~ Genealogy, History, and whatever else crosses my mind

Tombstone Tuesday: Need a mirror

When I went to Georgetown, Kentucky back in September 2007, I did what I usually do when I go to a new location: scout out the local cemeteries :) Maplegrove Cemetery in Georgetown is a small, modest, somewhat overgrown cemetery tucked behind a Pizza Hut and a gas station.

This tombstone for Eliza Washington is made from concrete. My best guess is that the person who made it poured the concrete into a box form, then set in stencils for the letters (like kids used to do with potatoes). The tombstone maker forgot (or didn’t realize) that the stencils had to be set backwards so they would appear correctly on the marker. (Again, this is just my best guess.)

I did find a 20-year-old Eliza Washington in the 1910 census for Scott County, Kentucky, but I’m not certain it is the same person.

5 thoughts on “Tombstone Tuesday: Need a mirror”

This is one of the neatest tombstones I’ve ever seen! I showed it to my husband, who said it reminded him of an episode of This Old House, in which bricks were shown that had the brick-maker’s name on them backwards because he had written his name forward on the mold.

I was doing a search for a mirror station stencil (used for school buses) and couldn’t help laughing when this post was one of the top ten hits! I’ll just tell the boss I wasn’t meant to do anything but genealogy after hours. :-) It is a very interesting stone.